Words Worth Noting - October 3, 2022

“‘Shucks,’ he [Thomas Edison] told a discouraged co-worker during one trying series of experiments, ‘we haven’t failed. We now know a thousand things that won’t work, so we’re that much closer to finding what will.’”

Edison’s son Charles, quoted in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [BTW a friend once emailed me this version: “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” They attributed it to Benjamin Franklin which appears to be spurious, but it is also widely available on line as being from Edison and I suspect it is an erroneous version of the above.]